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June 21, 2010 9:03 am |
by John Whalen, Business Development Manger, Fairchild Semiconductor |
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An emerging trend in the mobile handset 3G space has been the adoption and expansion of user friendly applications, nowadays called ‘Apps’. These ‘Apps’ are custom software program applications that are written for a very specific function within a handset.

The emphasis on low-power embedded systems can give engineers heartburn. They must strive to enhance a system's performance, add capabilities, and make its battery last for as many as 10 years. A combination of hardware and software tools now help engineers understand power consumption without the antacids.

It’s really not a question of whether or not the tablet computer will displace netbooks and laptops. What it comes down to is what functions the tablet computer will take over and what functions netbooks/laptops will retain.

A handheld battery operated spirometry device, for example, must be able to be turned on and off quickly and instantly, while continuously recording data over a 20-second period with optimized use of available power, thus requiring a low-voltage pressure sensor which is able to use power only as needed.

The bottom line is that nothing, and I mean nothing, can beat a fiber connection, not now and not in the foreseeable future. Fiber offers the highest speeds you can achieve, not to mention its other advantages such as extremely low operational costs and versatile high quality transmission.

Seattle: home of Microsoft, Starbucks, grunge rock, the Mariners, and in 2010, the Society for Information Display (SID) Conference. This year’s show was a remarkable display (no pun intended) of eye candy and emerging technologies. Among the many developments, 3D, energy efficiency, and advanced touchscreens took center stage.

The good news is that the current business in the electronic component and subsystem industry will probably continue to improve, but the bad news is most of the jobs lost in the Great Recession aren’t ever coming back. At recent events such as Embedded Systems and the Electronic Distribution Show, every company I spoke to was doing double-digit business percentages over last year...

This month's question, "In what area of development do you feel the most progress in mixed-signal ICs will occur?" was answed by Raymond Lee of MagnaChip, Stephen Kempainen of National Semiconductor, and John Whalen of Fairchild Semiconductor.

Evolution from cell phones with only a base-band processor and limited memory to today's high-end phones with an additional applications processor and memory has driven the industry to 3-D packaging solutions. 3-D packaging can be achieved via die stacking in one package, package-in-a-package stacking or package on package stacking.

LEDs have recently garnered favor in the automotive community for their inherent long life as well as styling and design ques. Unlike the single point incandescent bulb, several LEDs acting in conjunction provide the required intensity for the combined Stop and Tail lamp functions.

What value does a component distributor offer other than obtaining goods from a single source? Can they offer value beyond that convenience? Large distributors offer everything from resistors to fully programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

The electronic component distribution market has gone through many changes over the past decade. Currently, one of the biggest problems is the emergence of counterfeit components, largely stemming from China. Although the Asian marketplace has proliferated in flooding the market with more and less expensive components, domestic profit margins have decreased largely in part to counterfeit product.